‘Alina Antoniv.’
‘Ukrainian?’
‘Yes.’
He gazed at her a moment longer, the faintest smile playing on his lips. Then he nodded to the sergeant and she, too, was heading for the truck.
They drove away from the city centre, swerving to avoid fire engines racing towards the towering columns of smoke. People exchanged glances, risked a shrug or two, but no one spoke. Two soldiers were sitting on the tailgate, their rifles erect between their knees. When the truck finally slowed, Bella managed to steal a look back. A huge pall of smoke was still drifting over Khreshchatyk, and as she watched there came another explosion, and a second, and then – seconds later – a third. The woman beside her was crossing herself.
‘The Russians,’ she whispered to herself. ‘They’re bombarding us.’
The truck ground to a halt. The place looked like a military barracks, abandoned by the Red Army. There were soldiers everywhere, bellowed commands, men running, engines starting. Bella watched two men struggling with a huge reel of canvas firehose, trying to hoist it onto the back of a trailer. Then the soldiers in the truck dropped the tailgate and ordered everyone out. At gunpoint, they were herded towards an open door. Then the officer in charge had second thoughts.
‘Halt!’
Soldiers were suddenly among them, pushing them roughly into ranks, facing onto the barrack square. Another officer had appeared, younger, leaner, black uniform, knee-high boots in polished leather. He unfolded a sheet of paper, and began to read it aloud in a high, thin voice.
Bella understood every word. The Schutzstaffel, he said, were empowered by the Reich to take control of this chaos. The city was under threat from saboteurs. First, the fires would be put out. Then those responsible would be hunted down. And, finally, justice would be done. In the meantime, those present – here and elsewhere – would be held as hostages against further acts of terrorism. Kyiv was burning, he piped. The innocent would suffer, but – thanks to the SS – the guilty would pay.
Bella heard the roar of yet another explosion, hoping to God the newspaper offices had been spared. The SS officer flinched but then composed himself. A nod to the soldiers, and they were all heading for the open door again. Stairs led to a basement, a big empty space barely lit, pitted concrete floor, bare wires hanging from the ceiling, an overwhelming smell of damp. The steel door slammed shut and, in the half-darkness, people looked at each other, seeking reassurance, trying to make sense of what was happening, and slowly there came a low, hesitant mutter of conversation.
People were comparing notes, the women especially. Some had been on the way to the market, others had friends to meet, calls to make, children to pick up. Then had come the terrifying explosions, the city blowing itself apart in front of their eyes, and now this. What had we ever done? Why us? Bella listened. Lives so suddenly interrupted, she thought, and people rightly fearful of what might happen next.
Hours went by. People sat down, backs against the wall, seeking comfort in each other, and Bella found herself beside a big woman whose age she could only guess at. She was blonde, with an enormous chest, and she’d had a bad time with a Russian official who’d demanded her favours in exchange for a weekly supply of chicken livers. The meat had been a godsend, especially for her husband who had to dig up roads all day, but the bloody Russian had fallen in love with her, or so he claimed, and she’d ended up half dying of exhaustion. The Soviets, she said, belonged in a zoo. They made love like animals and rarely bothered with conversation. Bella, who knew a thing or two about Russian men, could only agree, and she was about to share a memory of her own when the door opened.
This time, there were three officers, and they divided the basement room between them, moving from person to person, demanding their papers, noting down names and addresses and dates of birth. Bella confirmed her false name again. According to her ID papers, she lived at the address of the old woman everyone called Mama, and Bella wondered whether these people ever bothered to check. Kyiv, she told herself, would still be a mystery to the Germans, every corner of the city a jigsaw of streets, and for the time being – with luck – she’d safely remain a native Ukrainian.
Alas, no. Everyone had been listed. The officers had gone. Bella was back in conversation with her new friend, telling her about the empty apartments in the apparatchiki block, when the SS officer with the squeaky voice appeared at the door and called her name. For a moment, she thought she’d misheard, but then he shouted again, louder this time, and her companion dug her in the ribs.
‘That’s you,’ she said. ‘Maybe they’re letting you go.’
Bella stood and picked her way between bodies, aware of the stir she was causing. The SS officer was waiting for her beside the door.
‘Alina Antoniv?’ Bella nodded. ‘Follow me.’
One flight of stairs led to another. Finally, the SS officer found the door he was after. The office was bare, except for a wooden desk, two chairs, and a lighter oblong on the wall where something had been removed. The windowpane was broken, most of the glass missing, and Bella could smell burning. Children’s World, she thought, and God knows where else.
The officer settled in the chair behind the desk and removed his cap. Smooth cheeks, perfectly barbered. Black hair cut high around the whiteness of his scalp. Thin lips and a hint of weakness in his receding chin. From a drawer in the desk he produced a pad. The pen came from the breast pocket of his SS jacket.
‘Hinsetzen!’ Bella sat down. ‘You speak German?’ The question, in English, was a trap.
Bella looked blank. ‘I’m Ukrainian,’ she said in German. ‘I speak Russian, too, and a little of your language.’
‘You live here?’ German again.
‘I do.’
‘Born here?’
‘Of course. But you know that from my papers.’
‘And you learned your German where, exactly?’
‘In Halle. I worked as a maid.’
‘For how long?’
‘Two years. Enough to learn your language.’
‘You have a name? An address?’
‘It was near the station. Her name was Frau Schmidt.’
‘And this was when, exactly?’
‘1937.’
‘I see.’ He’d been jotting down notes. Now his head came up. The tightness of the cap had left a faint pink mark around his forehead. He’s far too young for a job like this, Bella thought. The SS was normally home for older men, seasoned psychopaths with a playful taste for serious violence. This man belonged in a classroom. Pupil or teacher? She wasn’t sure.
‘And then you came back?’ he enquired. ‘Here? To Kyiv?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just a little fish, then? This morning? Caught in our net?’
‘Yes,’ Bella hugged her bag closer. ‘Can I go now? Might that be in order?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ The officer checked his pad a final time and got to his feet. Moments later, he’d left the office. Bella heard a key turn in the lock, and then came the sound of his footsteps receding down the corridor.
In the sudden silence, Bella could hear the faraway rustle of leaves blowing in the wind, and when she got to her feet and went to the window she was surprised to find the parade ground below completely empty, except for a black Mercedes. The driver, in SS uniform, was busy polishing the long bonnet, and as she watched he moistened a fingertip to remove a tiny mark. During her years in Berlin, German attention to detail had never ceased to amaze her. Conquest was one thing, she thought, and the Germans were very good at it, but when it came to occupation they were even better, and here was why.
She sat down again, staring at the scribbled notes on the pad, wondering whether she’d told the SS officer too much. In the NKVD’s Big House in Moscow, where she had a desk, experienced interrogators always counselled reticence, but his questions had been direct and any whisper of evasion on her part would have raised whatever suspicions he had still further. The question she really had t
o answer was why she’d been the first to be called out. Had it been unwise to choose a name beginning with ‘A’? Were the SS in thrall to the alphabetical order? Or was there some darker motive at which she could only guess?
She was aware she was checking her watch far too often. She knew that good interrogators always used time to their advantage, letting the prisoner sweat a little, and she did her best to relax. Prisoner? Was that the word? Undoubtedly, yes. Be kinder on yourself, she thought. Admit your own helplessness. Because the truth is never supposed to hurt.
Moments later, she heard the sound of a car door open and close down in the parade ground, and she tried to imagine the driver back with the comforts of the leather upholstery, and perhaps a cigarette or two. Then her gaze returned to the oblong on the wall, with the tell-tale pock where a nail had once been. Only days ago, with the Soviets still in charge, she suspected that a framed photo of the Vodzh had been hanging here, and she marvelled at the way the winds of war could sweep countless images off countless walls the length and breadth of this immense empire. Stalin, one day. Hitler, or perhaps Onkel Heine the next.
Onkel Heine. The image it conjured made her shiver. Heinrich Himmler. Head of the SS. In charge of Hitler’s private army. The rimless glasses. The owlish expression. The jug ears. The carefully clipped moustache, doubtless in homage to his beloved Führer, and the little pot belly he did his best to hide on state occasions. This was the man, she told herself, who’d built an entire empire on a fierce appetite for savagery and – yes – on a painstaking attention to the smallest details. A monster from one angle, a bureaucrat of genius on the other. Was Kyiv ready for Onkel Heine and his disciples? Was she?
*
It was nearly dark by the time she heard the footsteps returning, and by now she’d recognised that the knots in her belly had been tightened by fear, rather than hunger. When the key turned in the lock, and the door opened, she deliberately made no effort to turn around. Expecting her first inquisitor, she found herself looking at a much older man.
She was no expert when it came to SS insignia, but he had the presence and authority that comes with senior rank. He put his briefcase on the desk and settled carefully in the chair. The cast in one eye made him look slightly deranged and too many sleepless nights were beginning to show in the hollows of his face. Like his boss, he wore a thin sprout of hair on his upper lip, and the climb to the top floor had left him visibly sweating.
He opened the briefcase and peered inside. Then he sat back, gazing at the notepad, his manicured nails tapping lightly on the tabletop.
‘My name is Standartenführer Kalb,’ he looked up. ‘I’m in charge here. Your name again?’
‘Alina Antoniv.’
‘From Kyiv? Yes?’ He had a Bavarian accent.
‘Yes.’
‘And you understand me? You speak a little German?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you have good Russian?’
‘Yes.’
‘But no English?’
‘No.’
‘I see.’ His good eye held her gaze. ‘Do you think we’re stupid? Be honest.’
‘I have no opinion in the matter. All I’d like is the opportunity to go home.’
‘To the old lady’s house?’
‘To Mama’s, yes.’
He nodded, taking his time. ‘But she hasn’t seen you for weeks,’ he murmured. ‘In fact, she only met you once, Fraulein Antoniv. So how do you explain that?’
Bella stared at him. She hadn’t got an answer, but worse was to come. From the briefcase, Kalb extracted a file and laid it carefully on the desktop where she could see it. All NKVD personal files were colour-coded, according to the classification of the subject. Purple was for foreign nationals, with the name typed on a white sticky label on the front. Even upside down, and even in Cyrillic, there could be no mistake. Isobel Menzies.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘NKVD headquarters,’ he gestured vaguely towards the road outside that led back into the city. ‘In what your Russian friends call the Big House. It was there for us to find. It was on display. Even we couldn’t have missed it.’
Bella ignored the sarcasm. Bezkrovny, she thought. The NKVD officer despatched from Moscow to meet her at Kharkov and bring her back. Either he delivered it in person, or had it sent through. Taking her chances with Ilya Glivenko had been a mistake. Lesson one for any senior NKVD officer under the cosh of Moscow? Assigned a task, a prey, you never give up.
Kalb was leafing through the file. He’d obviously been through it before. Finally, he looked up.
‘Do we agree you’re English?’
‘Yes.’ She saw no point in lying.
‘Yet you ran away to Moscow.’ A brief frown. ‘Might I ask why?’
‘Because I believed in it.’
‘Believed in what?’
‘Marx, Engels, Lenin, the October Revolution, equality, the Proletariat, the rightness of all that.’
‘And now?’
‘Now’s no different. The Revolution has fallen into Stalin’s lap but that’s no fault of the Revolution. Stalin may yet save it from Stalin. Funnier things have happened,’ she shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
Kalb nodded. For a brief moment, Bella sensed she’d won his full attention and wondered why.
‘What happened to your hair? Do you mind me asking?’
‘Not at all. I suffer from alopecia, baldness. It’s hereditary. My mother has it, too.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘So how do you explain this?’
Kalb slipped a photograph from the back of the file and handed it across. The focus and the lighting were perfect, even the tiny scabs of blood on her newly shaven head. The room behind was in deep shadow but she recognised Larissa’s grand piano.
‘This is you?’
‘This is me.’
‘When?’
‘Recently. Maybe a week ago.’
‘So, who took the photograph?’
Bella shook her head, wouldn’t say.
‘Was it this woman?’ More photographs, Larissa herself this time, shot by someone else. ‘We think these photographs probably came off the same roll of film. The backgrounds are very similar. The photos were in your file. I’m assuming your NKVD friends are sending us a message.’
‘About?’
‘You.’ His smile had no warmth. ‘They wanted us to find you. And, happily, we’ve done just that. What remains is to find your friend. Larissa Krulak, am I right? A journalist with a reputation. A journalist with many admirers. Someone with influence. Someone with a following. We know where she works. We know she was injured, and we’ve found the surgeon who set her arm. We also know where she lives but here’s the problem. She’s gone, fled, disappeared.’
Bella nodded. Whatever she thought of the SS and Onkel Heine, it would be wrong to underestimate this man. Details again, lots and lots of them. Only one question remained.
‘Why do you want her?’
Kalb sat back, took his time. In war, he said quietly, you never took anything for granted. At considerable expense of blood and treasure, his countrymen had taken one of the biggest cities in Europe. Victory had been complete, overwhelming, and – in its way – clean. So far, both officers and men had been gentle with Kyiv, taken care of it, restored the power, started to mend the water supply, reopened the market and the shops, even made the trams run on time.
‘We’ve done our best to behave like human beings,’ he gestured towards the window again, ‘but look how the Soviets repay us. Those Untermenschen, your Untermenschen, have laid explosives everywhere. This we know already. You want a list? The State Bank, Children’s World, the Grand Hotel. We dig in the ruins and we find many dead and injured, some of them ours. This is no way to fight a war. It’s cowardly and it has to stop. Are we surprised? In a way, we shouldn’t be. Russians are animals. But it still has to stop and for that to happen, we have to make it stop. We believe there will be more mines
, more explosions, more deaths. Someone knows where to find all these mines. There may be dozens of them, perhaps more. But someone, somewhere, knows. We have investigators flying in from Berlin. Let’s call them specialists. But in the meantime, we need to prepare a wider response. Killings like these can’t go unpunished. In Paris, for the death of a single German, we shoot a hundred Frenchmen. In Kyiv, for what happened today, we may need a different calculus, more blood.’ He paused. ‘Which brings us back to your friend.’
‘Larissa?’
‘Indeed. There are two points of interest here, and it’s only fair to share both of them. In the first place, we think she probably knows about these mines. For that reason alone, it might pay us to have a conversation.’
‘And the other reason?’
‘Far simpler.’ The smile again. ‘She’s a Jew.’
16
WEDNESDAY 24 SEPTEMBER 1941
The Mercedes was still waiting when Bella emerged from the barracks. Kalb had assigned her to the care of his bodyguard. Valentin, at first glance, looked like a retired wrestler Bella knew in Moscow. Leaning against the car, he wore a black leather coat that nearly reached his ankles. One of his huge hands cupped the remains of a cigarette, and his eyes never left Bella as she crossed the parade ground. His shaven head and the pastiness of his face was out of scale with the rest of him and under different circumstances, thought Bella, he might have featured in a child’s cartoon, but just now this caricature of a man felt intensely dangerous.
The certainty of sudden death was prowling the city centre. More explosions were expected by the hour and time was the enemy. Kalb, it seemed, had taken this chaos personally. He wanted names, leads, and he wanted them now, before his masters in Berlin started to lose patience with the Schutzstaffel’s man in unruly Kyiv.
Valentin ground the cigarette beneath his boot and opened the rear door.
‘In,’ he said.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You don’t know? He hasn’t told you?’ The prospect seemed to amuse him. ‘In,’ he said again.
Bella sat in the back, watching Kalb hurrying towards them. Valentin had produced a pair of handcuffs. He was examining her with a frankness she found disturbing. A dog, she thought, ungovernable, off the leash.
Kyiv (Spoils of War) Page 15
